Fook off, keese my assss, said the evangeliste.

Who would have thought it? All day long the feet of thousands of tourists had tramped over the Pont de Solferino and the first person to spot the shiny gold ring was a dear old granny.

We were faffing with something or other, I’d probably lost my sunglasses. Again. Then found them on my head. Again. The old dear explained she was a humble soul and that the solid gold men’s wedding ring meant nothing to her, but to us it was surely the luck we deserved. She must have thought we were down on our luck. Well she had witnessed the faffing.

She explained, in French, that she was an evangeliste and this was a sign for us. Yes, we thought in English, a sign that she was a scammer. Off she went, presumably on the way to Heaven, the Heaven where money and deceit are gods, leaving us with the ring. We had a lot more faffing to do so we carried on doing just that, then, quelle surprise, granny reappeared. Would we like to give her some money for a drink? No not really, we said, but we could give her a very valuable gold ring which she could sell. Funnily enough she didn’t seem to want those earthly riches. But we gave her it anyway, though she didn’t seem very thankful.

The faffing continued, Noel sat down as I took arty farty photos. In that short while, no less than three gold rings were found, we really are lucky. As we left, an American couple were looking wide eyed at another ring. We marvelled at our shared good fortune, then hypothesised that it may indeed have been a scam.

As we finally crossed the bridge the dear old lady was no longer smiling. She gesticulated and said in broken English ‘Fook you, keese my assss.’ Well that’s like no evangelistic language I’ve ever heard before!

The photo is of graffiti that appeared outside the hotel overnight. Ooo Paris is such an arty place!